Small & simple.
Maybe this is too simple.
It’s only 4″ x 2.5″ so I wasn’t sure of my capabilities without any magnifying device.
Also, I’m being bombarded with spam from some German packaged food wholesaler so I am going to turn off the comments for a while. It wasn’t all for naught; now I know there is a such thing as crunchy pumpernickel pretzels out there in the world. Those lucky Germans!
I spent a large portion of this winter isolated from friends and family. Long Wisconsin winters can take their toll when there is no one to talk to.
I began working on this shortly after New Years Eve. Then Kelly Hogan stepped in to commission the poster I made for her. When I was finished with her project, I had lost interest in completing this.
I was looking at it a few weeks ago and was thinking how I have no connection to these feelings anymore but I didn’t want to ignore that they did exist, (and I worked pretty hard designing it) so here you go.
This was a simple design I threw together to celebrate my grandma due to the fact that I was unable to attend her funeral.
I was unaware as a child that she also made art with alternative themes as my family only displayed her Spanish villa & church paintings.
Seeing her surreal watercolors as an adult was quite an eye opener. It’s reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch but not quite as detailed.
I wish I knew what drove her to paint them in the late 40’s and early 50’s.
I was going through old designs on my laptop the other day and was looking at several designs I made for drowning murder ballads from early American music. I had an idea to make several of these but I only designed 4. This is based on the classic Louvin Brothers song. The other’s I had designed were Banks of the Ohio (Bill Monroe), the Willow Garden (Osborne Brothers) and Make Your Bed (Neko Case). I had started a 5th design for Poor Ellen Smith (Hobart Smith), but as it wasn’t drowning related, I was having trouble making it fit in with the rest. During this whole process the Friday the 13th images took precedence and these were forgotten.
My friend Patty had commented that my solstice image didn’t fit well as a phone wallpaper and since the beginning of my work day on Friday was slow I decided to come up with “something”.
However, my day got busier and busier as it went on which left me little time to do any proper designing. Anyway, this is the result. Given another hour, I would have made a fancier label and cut into the red paper as well.
It’s the summer (estival) solstice! One of my favorite days. Unfortunately it seems my longest day will be bathed in torrential rain.
Work began earlier this month on a Billy Blake & the Vagabonds animated sequence to be projected in conjunction with the bands live performances.
Hopefully it will be completed by this time next year.
This image was my contribution sussing out some preliminary rough ideas.
I guess we’ll see in a year. More to follow…..